For 2012, Republicans run to the anti-war side of the street

By Steve Hynd

According to Mike Allen of Politico, Wahington Post conservative writer George Will's Sunday column will call U.S. intervention in Libya a "debacle" and an "absurdly disproportionate and patently illegal war". In saying that, he'll be speaking for a sizeable part of the American public. But more importantly he'll be giving valuable political support to Republicans, both incumbents and prospective presidential candidates, as they head for 2012 by running to the anti-war left.

House leader Boehner says he is reviewing options on Libya after the White House's non-answer on the question of congressional authorization:

�The White House says there are no hostilities taking place, yet we�ve got drone attacks under way, we�re spending $10 million a day, [and] part of the mission is to drop bombs on [Libyan dictator Moammar] Gadhafi's compound,� Boehner said. �That doesn�t pass the straight-face test, in my view, that we�re not in the midst of hostilities.�

...The �ultimate option,� Boehner said, is that �Congress has the power of the purse� and could cut off funding for the mission. �Certainly that is an option as well,� he said.

Such a move would certainly be opposed by Dems in the Senate and in any case vetoed by Obama, leading to an optic going into 2012 of Democrats, led by a loose-cannon President, forcing Congress to fund a war they haven't authorized. Thanks to weak-kneed Dems, the Left could only dream of such a scenario going into 2008 - one that would have led to an even bigger landslide for Obama and could lead to apathy on the part of the Democratic base next year.

Boehner's not the only one sounding like a peacenik lefty hippie recently either. As Jim Malone of VOA News notes:

The recent Republican debate had a different tone in the discussion of the war in Afghanistan compared to debates in the past two U.S. presidential elections.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is the frontrunner for the Republican Party�s presidential nomination next year. Romney says the long U.S. commitment to the war in Afghanistan should serve as a cautionary lesson to those who would support nation-building efforts in the future.

�I want those troops to come home based upon not politics, not based upon economics, but instead based upon the conditions on the ground determined by the generals," he said. "But I also think we have learned that our troops should not go off and try to fight a war of independence for another nation. Only the Afghanis can win Afghanistan�s independence from the Taliban.�

During the debate Ron paul went even further:

�I wouldn�t wait for my generals. I�m the commander in chief. I make the decisions," he said. "I tell the generals what to do and I would bring them home as quickly as possible and I would get them out of Iraq as well. And I wouldn�t start a war in Libya and I would quit bombing Yemen and I�d quit bombing Pakistan.�

And even Michele Bachmann described American policy on Libya as "substantially flawed".

Finally, today newly-announced candidate Jon Huntsman threw his anti-war statement into the arena:

Huntsman, during an interview last week with CNN Chief Political Correspondent Candy Crowley that aired on "State of the Union," raised the question of whether U.S. forces can remain until 2014 or beyond. "I would argue you can if you're willing to pay another quarter of a trillion dollars to do so. But if it isn't in our direct national security interest and if there isn't a logical exit strategy and if we don't know what the cost is going to be in terms of money and human lives, then I think you have to say it's probably time we reevaluate this if we can't make that strong argument with the American people."

In a separate interview just published in Esquire Magazine, Huntsman said remaining engaged in Afghanistan does not seem to be key to America's national security.

"It's a tribal state, and it always will be. Whether we like it or not, whenever we withdraw from Afghanistan, whether it's now or years from now, we'll have an incendiary situation...Should we stay and play traffic cop? I don't think that serves our strategic interests," Huntsman, a former U.S. ambassador to China, told Esquire. In excerpts released of its upcoming story, Huntsman said if the U.S. can't "define a winning strategy for the American people, where we somehow come out ahead, then we're wasting our money, and we're wasting our strategic resources."

Huntsman told CNN the American people want to be out of the country "as quickly as we can get it done."

It's making for an interesting 2012, I must say. Not that I believe one word of it, though. Like Democrat apparatchiks before them, the Republican power players are just trying to tap the votes of an American public which is sick of the Forever War. Indside the beltway, though, interventionism as the guiding light of American foreign policy isn't dead - in fact it is flourishing. Like Dems in 2008 who deserted the anti-war movement in droves, Republicans will spurn their current stances should they win the presidency and reclaim the wars as "theirs".